InsaneJournal

Who: Kozue and Renju
What: Temple-going.
Where: The Buddhist temple near the dorm. I say there is one, so, there is one.
When: A few days after Renju's dungeon - screw you, specificity.
Why: Crisis (crises?) of faith. What is the plural of crisis anyway?


The attendants at the Buddhist temple nearest the Nanakamado dorms had started getting familiar with this short, blond, obviously part-foreign girl. After all, she'd come in every afternoon for the last… what, two or three days? Had it been more? They couldn't quite agree when she'd started coming, but certainly she had been here more than twice. She stood out mostly because high school students tended to come in before exams, not after them. The place wasn't exactly crowded. Still, she'd come in and go through all the motions outside, before stepping into the hall, kneeling, and contemplating. Then someone would see her leaving, maybe half an hour later—maybe an hour later—looking very tired and worried.

Today was the same. Kozue found that walking in the summer heat was actually kind of nice, when she thought about how cold it had been, in Renju's place; being too hot was suddenly much less unpleasant. She washed her hands and face, and left an offering, and stepped into the hall full of Buddha statues, without actually thinking much about any of the actions. (Which. Weren't you supposed to be mindful? But she had always been bad at mindful.) Even though she hadn't been to temple on her own practically since she started living away from her grandmother's house (festivals didn't count), she was still so used to the entire production. It was nice not to have Fumiko breathing down her neck, of course, and staring when she fidgeted. People were staring at her, of course; between her hair and her age, she was a bit unusual. People always stared in temples. But at least this time there was no grandmother accompanying her—she didn't have to watch Fumiko's glowers get worse and worse and her insults sourer and more pointed with each questioning glance. Each glance that pointed out the different thing that Fumiko had attached to her side.

Kozue took a breath. Why was she thinking about grandmother, anyway? She was supposed to be… hell, when she'd learned to pray and meditate at temple she'd always been thinking about her grandmother anyway. Why was now any different?

She sat in front of the low wooden railing that separated the buddha from everyone else—all the lay worshipers, at least— and pondered and failed at meditating for longer than she'd done on the last few visits. When she remembered, she went through the Daimoku in her head; it kept slipping into other thoughts, though. I'm really not very good at this at all.